Images, signes, fétiches. À propos de l’art bamana (Mali)

Images, Signs, Fetishes. About Bamana ArtThe paper discusses the use of the term "fetish", strongly devaluated in anthropology but never really replaced.  Religious practices implying sacrifices of animal "on" objects to which people attribute special powers are so important in Africa, that the anthropologist cannot avoid the subject.  Precise ethnographic description of these practices only can avoid derogative or polemic use of Western sociological terms that are never entirely satisfying. A description of the fabrication, the transmission and the "circulation" of special objects called "boliw" in Mande cultures follows.  The author refuses the usual ethnic distinctions: Bamana, he argues, are, in Mali, the people who affirm not to be Muslim and who sacrifice animal to enforce powerful objects.  This ethnography revisits themes such as ethnicity, divination, alliance, secret and gender.Images, Signs, Fetishes. About Bamana ArtThe paper discusses the use of the term "fetish", strongly devaluated in anthropology but never really replaced.  Religious practices implying sacrifices of animal "on" objects to which people attribute special powers are so important in Africa, that the anthropologist cannot avoid the subject.  Precise ethnographic description of these practices only can avoid derogative or polemic use of Western sociological terms that are never entirely satisfying. A description of the fabrication, the transmission and the "circulation" of special objects called "boliw" in Mande cultures follows.  The author refuses the usual ethnic distinctions: Bamana, he argues, are, in Mali, the people who affirm not to be Muslim and who sacrifice animal to enforce powerful objects.  This ethnography revisits themes such as ethnicity, divination, alliance, secret and gender.